We started today at Dunkin' Donuts. Carter had the new Hippie Flatbread Patchouille Egg White Sandwich and a Chocolate Frosted Donut. I think that the coffee and the sugar overwhelmed him, because he didn't quite make it through the door. We eventually made it up to Burlington and are getting ready for the show tonight at Higher Ground.... it should be a blast.

Well, we are getting down to the last couple days of overdubs. This is the time when we try not to forget anything major (I swear we recorded Carter's guitar solo!) and try to remember all of the little things that we thought would be cool 2 months ago. Yesterday was a lot of fun... Jason came in and played a bunch of extra percussion stuff: some snare rolls here, some shaker or tambourine there. But, the coup de grace was the cowbell on Meltdown. Hell Yeah! It will make Will Ferrell and Blue Oyster Cult jealous…<br><br>Tom came in the afternoon and we did some group vocals. Barry was envisioning a large crowd singing, so we rounded up as many people as we could: Me, Barry, Jason, Tom, Shannon (our assistant engineer) and Terra (John Morand's wife). John then recorded us a bunch of times, with us moving to different positions each take, and layered the tracks together to make a large crowd out of a half dozen of us.<br><br>After that, Tom busted out his accordion (freshly tuned up and adjusted by our good friends at Hohner… it's handy having them up in Ashland) to put down a couple of tracks on a song called Pink. It sounded awesome! The only problem was trying to keep Tom from stomping his feet. Bog boots + expensive mics = bad news! Actually, he resisted the urge to stomp and just played his butt off.<br><br>Barry is in the studio finishing up some backing vocals today, while I'm here in my little studio (read: garage) also taking a whack at some back-up vocals. Hopefully we'll wrap up the last few tracks and start mixing next week.<br><br>Take Care,<br>Terry

I just started trying to reply to all of the emails from all of the people wishing the band and Jordan well… there are so many that I would be typing all night! So, I have decided that I would just send out a big thank-you in the form of a blog. We really appreciate all of your kind words and are lucky to have such amazing fans!

Jordan and his wife are expecting their third child soon and as sorry as I am to see him leave, I can totally understand it. There is a lot to be said for some stability and benefits, not the least of which being good health insurance! I know that Jordan will make a great music teacher and wish him and his family nothing but the best.

In other news (other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?), the record is coming along really, really well. There are only a couple of songs that still need lead vocals and then we will spend a week or so adding back-up vocals and all of the extra herbs and spices: percussion, weird guitar sounds, keyboards, accordions, didgeridoo, tuba, steel drums, etc. Things have been a bit slow for the last couple of weeks because our producer, John, has been on vacation in Canada (hence the lack of studio up-date blogs).

While we were on break, we enlisted the help of computer wiz Shannon Forrest to help edit down some of the billion tracks that we have accumulated. Shannon lives in Nashville and he worked on Love Loss Hope Repeat with us. While we were working on LLHR, Shannon fell in love with my lasagna. I know that it sounds weird, but it’s true. Anyhow, as a thank you for helping us out on the record too, I decided to Fed-Ex him a couple lasagnas. These suckers were mammoth. I froze them and then packed them in an Igloo cooler with as many of those little blue ice thingies as I could fit in. The lady a Fed-Ex thought I was crazy when I brought in a 52-pound cooler of lasagna to send to Nashville.

I just wanted to write a quick note and thank you guys the fans and
especially Barry, Terry, Carter, Scott and Jason for the years of
friendship and support.
This was not an easy decision to make but in the end I have to do
what's best for my beautiful wife and kids. It's been an incredible
ride and I wish
nothing but continued success for Carbon Leaf. God has given me a great
opportunity and I look forward to starting a new chapter in my life.

Here we are in the sitting upstairs at Sound Of Music working on some more guitar overdubs. Carter just finished putting down electric guitar and then doubling it with electric 12 String on a song called "Pink". Right now he is changing out the 9 Volt battery in his Fulltone '69 pedal and getting ready to put on the big lead part for the end. I'll be doing acoustic guitars after that, but in the meantime, I'm hanging out catching up on my blogs. Yesterday I used my downtime to create 14 new MySpace pages, so that all of our albums and songs would be up. It's one of those things that I have been meaning to do for a long time, so I finally got of my butt and did it.

Last Saturday we had a show down in Raleigh for their Downtown Live concert series. In order to get a sound check, we needed to be there at 10:15 am. We finished our sound check at 12:15 and, since our actual set wasn't until 9:45, we had several hours to kill. Carter was putting some stuff up for sale at a great store called Indoor Storm, so Jason, Jordan and I tagged along with him. That place is incredible! They have some really amazing guitars, amps and drums…. I can definitely see myself with the big red Carr half-stack at some point!

After that we headed back downtown and (on the recommendation from Dave at Indoor Storm) ended up grabbing lunch at Cooper's Barbecue. Holy C*&%!! Definitely some of the best BBQ I've ever had – plus, their hushpuppies were incredible. Apparently, Cooper's is a bit of an institution in Raleigh and I can certainly see why.

We then retreated to our air conditioningless dressing room to let the lunch settle for a bit. I think that the hushpuppies expanded in our stomachs and pretty soon the four of us were just about passed out into food comas. Sweating. Not a pretty picture.

A little later I was taking a walk and ran into Brad Smith from Blind Melon. When we were getting ready to record Love Loss Hope Repeat, we talked on the phone to Brad and Christopher Thorn about producing the project, but the timing didn't work out then. It was really nice to meet those guys in person. Very gracious guys. It was a ton of fun to stand on the side of the stage and watch their set. Totally amazing. I'm not sure where they found their new singer, Travis Warren, but he sounds almost identical to Shannon Hoon… it was almost a little eerie.

Our set was a lot of fun, but I could tell that I was a bit rusty on some of the set. My mind has been so focused on the stuff that we are recording that I forgot some dumb little stuff. It was really nice to get out and blow off some steam though! We also shot a little video of a dedication to a Marine over in Iraq – hopefully we'll have something up on YouTube next week. Other than Buford nearly setting the lighting rig on fire (not his fault – the guy that was in charge of the lights didn't know what he was doing and was incredibly unhelpful, "I love this job because I don't have to do anything", "What are they going to do, fire me?"), it was a great time had by all.

Well, I think that Carter is about finished laying down the shred… time for me to get to work!

Today we are multi-tasking. Carter and I are in the downstairs studio working on guitars for "Indecision". I played acoustic first and own Carter is putting on his lead parts. He just finished his main track, playing his old brown Tele through his Two Rock and his old Deluxe. Barry is up on the third flood working on his lead vocal track for another tune – I'm not sure which one. The air conditioning has been fixed, so now it's kind of chilly in here… I'll take chilly to sweaty any day. John just picked up some Papadopoulos strawberry cream cookies at Nick's that are delicious. I'm not sure what they are really called – there is a bunch of weird Greek letters on the package that I'm pretty sure translates into "yummy". Carter is now using his Jazzmaster through a couple of cool echo boxes (Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay, Diamond, T-Rex Replica) to play this weird ethereal slide part on the bridge. I keep telling him that he needs to make it more "effervescent" and he keeps looking like he wants to punch me. Barry just came down to see what we are working on and just found his cell phone wedged way down into the frame of the couch. This is good news because he lost it about a week ago and had to get is old, old phone reactivated. Anyhow… that's what we are up today.

Today Carter and I have been doing guitar overdubs on a song called "What Have You Learned". Actually, Carter has been doing all of the heavy lifting, so I decided to grab my camera and capture some of the action. Here it is....

So, it’s my day to blog again... but I'm really busy recording guitar tracks... I'll tell a quick story and then get back to work.....

It's funny, the moments that I find suitable for reflecting on my actions. I found myself upside down in a cold river, in the middle of the winter.... and in the mood to look back and figure out how I came to be in this position. I am not using this as a potential "Jacques Cousteau" moment, to catalog underwater life... nor am I showing off the art projects that used to adorn the bottom of my boat (messages such as: "if you can read this, tell my Mom I love her", "S#!T!", or "does anyone have the number for 911")... I am trying to figure out how I came to be wet, cold, and upside down, the latter adding to the fact that this had better not take too long....

I have been Kayaking for a long time, but like many things, my intense interest in the sport seems to come and go (according to doctors these days I have an affliction and there is medication available, as well as a truck load of acronyms)... So, a friend of mine has recently been bitten by the "bug" and must go boating at any and every chance. Being the seasoned veteran that I am, I am a bit reluctant to get back in the boat. But then he uses that age-old negotiating tool that every man has used against the other since the dawn of the ego.... "sissy." It's on....

This was a bit over 2 years ago and we have been boating many times since. It is well into this new chapter that I realize that I have not flipped over in many years... I'm just that good (meaning I will do anything to keep from tipping over, including paddling so fast that not only do my arms look like Shaggy's legs (Scooby Doo, bare with me) when he sees a ghost... but the world starts to spin in reverse). I begin to realize that it is only a matter of time before my luck runs out. Occasionally, I will be floating down any given river... look over at the water, ponder a practice roll (rolling the boat over, not related to a muffin), and then remind myself that I'm not on this river to get wet! I settle for starting every run by confiding in my buddy Brian that "today could be the day!"

At this point I would like to introduce my father, known from this point as "Dad". I started boating when he dragged me (no small effort) away from my skateboard and plopped me in a boat. One of my fondest memories of the "early years" involves Dad and our first kayak class. There we are... all in a row in a cold, muddy river and an overcast sky (a textbook family vacation). The instructor inquires as to whether anyone in the group can roll, to my surprise my father's hand goes up. Ohhh realllllly? The kind instructor asks for a demonstration and a demonstration he shall receive.... Dad rolls over effortlessly, beautiful!! The judges give him a 10! Surprisingly (to everyone but me), nothing happens... a few bubbles, well he did have that burrito for lunch... the boat begins to shake a bit, steadily increasing until it starts to look like a huge blue banana having a seizure..... It would seem that, not only can he not roll, but also he does not know how to exit the boat. I would have helped, but I was laughing so hard that the best I could do was keep my body from evacuating fluids from every point possible. He eventually pops out and we get him upright and back in the boat. He takes this in stride, along with all of the similar moments in our past that he wishes that I would forget.

Back to me... so, we were finishing another run down the James. I made down again... guess today wasn't the day... chatting with Brian and my Dad, goofing off, one hand on my paddle... I hit a rock… in a "rapid" of waves about the size of a soup can. Assess... hmm, I am now underwater, my paddle is in one hand off to one side of the boat, this water is cold (I was right not to practice this, it stinks), and my Dad and Brian are laughing at me... hell, I’m laughing at me. At this point, I decide that I am either going to die... or roll up, no way am I getting out of this boat! Though they learned it all from me, they are both now seasoned trash talking machines.... there will be no end, if I bail out! So, I get both arms on the same side of the boat... moving underwater is like..... moving underwater. I make a quick attempt, just to get some air... it's been a while... and with the second, I'm up. Whew... I guess some things you never forget....

Tracked 4 songs today. Pretty good progress. Just finished up. I took some photos around the place of some of the cast and crew......

VANGUARD VISITATION. Our label rep Steve Buckingham came in town to visit the studio and see how things were going. He's a good guy, and busy one, as he's teaching a course for U of R next, runs Sugar Hill Records in Nashville (Vanguard's sister label), and is a busy music producer as well (Dolly Parton). He stayed for a few hours and he didn't tell us to start over, so I hope we're doing alright....maybe Dolly will come in and sing...

SHANNON - 2ND ENGINEER. HER MOTHER COOKED US A HAM.

DEVILCAT

MIGUEL PRETENDING TO READ A BLANK JOURNAL

JONATHAN/JONOTHON/JONOTHAN...."DEAR BARRY, IF YOU DON'T PAY US THE DEPOSIT FOR JUNE I'M GOING TO BREAK OUR AC UNIT"

TERRY TRYING TO GIVE THE ROCK POSE BUT I MERELY CAUGHT HIM MID-ROCK, INSTEAD